


there are many names in history

by pyotr



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Gen, One Shot Collection, Trans Character, Trans Terror Week
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-23 16:25:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21323155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyotr/pseuds/pyotr
Summary: fics for the #transterrorweek eventday 3:and harry looks at him now, drinks the sight of him in, lit in shades of dim green. gore has pulled his scarf down under his chin and is looking at the sky, his face tilted upwards and soft with a sort of childish awe. little more than a whisper harry says, “beautiful. yes, i suppose it is.”
Relationships: Harry D. S. Goodsir/Lt Graham Gore, Thomas Jopson & Captain Francis Crozier
Comments: 21
Kudos: 48
Collections: Trans Terror Week





	1. day 1: there is wonder here

**Author's Note:**

> cw for some misgendering i suppose, though it's not like, intense or malicious
> 
> historical notes:  
thomas jopson was born in 1816 the eldest son of william (d. 1850) and sarah jopson (d. 1849). he had three younger sisters (mary, sarah, and ann jane) before his one brother william was born in 1830, and then another sister named emma after that. he did actually fight slavers before that and sustained a leg wound that was severe enough that the scar left behind was recorded as a distinguishing mark on later nal records; he was probably left with a limp, as well.
> 
> (much thanks to kit and ashley for the info!)

“my lovely girl,” his mother would coo to him as she brushed out his hair before bed, the long, dark locks sliding like silk through her steady fingers. that was what she was like before the accident, steady and strong, even-keeled. “my sweet girl.”

thomas remembered her like that, he did, but he also remembered her like this: bleary-eyed and her mind absent, laughing at everything or nothing at all or both, the sound a half-deranged chuckle that made him want to cover his ears even now. she was his mother, but the laudanum had addled her so much that she never noticed when he left his skirts behind for trousers, when she had a son instead of a daughter.

(it was both a blessing and a curse, in a way: she didn’t remember him as the child she had loved and raised _before, _but now he had never been anything but thomas.)

it had been to work, at first. his father was in their lives so rarely and his mother struggled to support them all, her four precious daughters, and after the accident- after she got worse- she didn’t work at all, so thomas worked instead and it was only by some miracle that they didn’t all end up in workhouses. some days his mother took up laundering and brought in some money to afford her laudanum, and the girls would do their best to pick up after her when she inevitably slipped again, and it would start all over.

he was fourteen when will was born. it was not long after everything went bad- thomas had just cut all of his long hair and ann was still so _young- _and he did his his best to take care of them all, he did, but in the end he was barely more than a child himself. in the end, he ran.

he got work where he could, anywhere that would take a young boy. eventually he ends up on a ship, seventeen years old but looking three years younger, and he’s taken out to thwart slavers, which he does successfully for a handful of years before taking a saber to the back of his left calf. 

it left him with the barest limp that kept him from running about on deck or scuttling up ratlines, and it broke his heart. he’d learned to love sailing, the creak and sway of the ship’s hull; he didn’t know what he’d be without it.

he put himself forward as a steward, instead.

thomas could still sew, his stitches small and precise, and he knew how to keep his head down and take orders. the rest would come, he was told; in time he would learn to polish glasses and fetch clothing and shave. with a few well-placed comments and connections, he found himself on a ship southwards to the antarctic sea.

(”you’re a smart lad, mister jopson,” captain crozier said to him once after they’d left van dieman’s land in late 1840, as thomas was sewing a button back on to his shirt cuff, “what made you want to spend years freezing your bollocks off on the ice?”

a smile twitches at thomas’s mouth, something wry, and he masks it by biting off the thread. “i only wanted to sail, sir. that’s all.”)

and he did spend years freezing, cold down to his bones, but he found a place that suited him better than fighting slavers ever had, better than the work he’d done as a child at his mother’s knee. 

he was decently sure that crozier was aware, of course- there was only so much time you could spend around a man without wondering why he never seemed to need to shave, among other things, and crozier was a smart man, a perceptive man- but he’d never said anything, never given any indication save a raised brow or a vaguely knowing look. he’d treated thomas like any other man, if not with the familiarity a captain reserved for his steward.

thomas knew that he’d follow crozier for as long as he would have him. 

he thinks of this now as he mops the sweat from crozier’s face with a damp cloth, and he thinks of his mother, too. he had taken care of her like this sometimes, fed her and cleaned her like a child, and sometimes she would recognize him as her daughter, or she would see a stranger, or it would be as if he wasn’t there at all. crozier though, when crozier wakes he will look at him, not always clear-eyed, and he will say, “thomas.”

and thomas will smile, something small and soft past the bright, warm feeling between his ribs and he will think, _this is it, this is where i’m meant to be, this is where i want to be, _and he will respond, “i’m here, sir.”


	2. day 2: frozen in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some inuit legends tell of shamans/spiritual leaders/healers that were women living as men, or men living as women, or some mixture of the two. it's also interesting to note in this case the shape that's been given to the tuunbaq; the tuunbaq is a spirit in and of itself, but traditionally polar bear spirits were considered "men's helpers" as they were the ones that male shamans and healers called upon, and so were typically associated with masculinity.
> 
> anyway, all of this to say: nonbinary silna

they called her _woman._

she hadn’t understood at first what the word meant- woman, girl- it had just been another series of incomprehensible syllables in their strange, alien tongue. once she understood, though- harry, her harry, had bridged the language gap between them with no small amount of gesturing and blushing- once she understood, she couldn’t help but be amused.

they were correct, and they were not. in another life she may have been a woman. but here and now, in this life, she was _sixam ieua, _a shaman.

men hunted seal and caribou; women prepared food, made clothing, and kept the home. one could do the other’s job, but rarely; silna did both on the regular. she had her tattoos, dark lines that scrolled across her arms and leg and earned with the same pain and endurance as any woman, but not on her face- another thing that marked her apart, that showed she lived in that in-between of man and woman. any of the people would know immediately what she was.

but here on this strange wooden building, among these strange pale people, she was _woman. _

she understood them only in bits and pieces, muttered conversations between the men that guarded her room (her prison). they didn’t like her, that was clear, didn’t trust her; they cast her wary (fearful) glances, and when she was spoken to directly (rarely) she often caught the displeased frown that passed over harry’s face even if she couldn’t parse the words themselves.

_woman, _they called her; and then, as if they were the same, _witch. _

they blamed her for their misfortune, she knew: the cold that made the ice thick and impenetrable, and the tuunbaq that kept them from wandering far. these men didn’t realize that she was trapped just the same was they, frozen in and hunted.


	3. day 3: aurora borealis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gore is trans because i say so even though i dont mention or even allude to it

“look, doctor,” gore says, pointing, “do you see that?”

harry follows his finger, squinting up at the dark sky. the stars were remarkably bright here, stark, clean white against inky black, so different from edinburgh, from london. the arctic winter was frightfully cold, silent and still and _dark, _but the stars were worth it.

“i don’t,” harry says, just as quiet. they are standing up on deck huddled together; it is roughly two-thirty in the afternoon, he knows, but january in the arctic doesn’t allow for daylight. “i don’t see anything.”

gore huffs a laugh, a warm puff of air that gets caught in the scarf wrapped ‘round the lower half of his face. he takes harry’s hand- harry flushes, an embarrassed heat rising to his cheeks- and moves it to where he had been pointing, says, “right there.”

harry holds his breath and squints harder, straining his eyes in the dark to see whatever it was that gore wanted him to see. and then, there, he thinks he catches it- a flicker of light in the sky, brilliant blue and green and white all at once before it winks out again, and he can _feel _his expression go slack in wonder.

“oh,” he says, soft, and if he’d looked over he would have seen gore’s eyes crinkle up in a smile. but he didn’t and so he doesn’t, and instead he lets himself lean into gore, just a little bit. the cold is biting into his nose, his cheeks- they ought to go inside, really- as they stand side by side in the dark.

as they watch the sky it lightens more and more, not with morning sun but with the borealis, green fingers of light and gas curling against the inky black backdrop. harry knows they aren’t the only ones on deck watching it creep across the sky, but pressed close like they were it felt like they were the only two people in the whole world.

“you’d never see something like that back home,” gore says to him. “isn’t it beautiful, harry?”

and harry looks at him now, drinks the sight of him in, lit in shades of dim green. gore has pulled his scarf down under his chin and is looking at the sky, his face tilted upwards and soft with a sort of childish awe. little more than a whisper harry says, “beautiful. yes, i suppose it is.”

gore’s fingers tighten around harry’s and he doesn’t let go of his hand. harry doesn’t pull away.


End file.
